Motorists will get six hours of worry-free street parking on weekends if council ratifies a decision made by the transportation committee on Wednesday.

The committee voted in favour of extending the current three-hour maximum parking time on unsigned streets to six hours between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

The change is expected to give relief to homeowners who are having visitors — for a birthday party or for Christmas dinner, for example — so they don’t have to move their vehicles every three hours in that 12-hour enforcement window.

Residents could still petition the city to have parking restrictions on their streets if the limits aren’t posted.

Troy Leeson, manager of parking enforcement, said the city only received 33 complaints on average each weekend in 2016 from people calling about cars parked for more than three hours on unsigned streets.

Leeson said he supports the proposed change to the six-hour limit, since weekend complaints largely relate to people parking on the road for multiple days.

“It’s about people that have gone Friday night and have parked their second or third vehicle on the road and don’t look at it again until Monday,” Leeson said.

The city anticipates the six-hour parking window will also reduce complaints from people whose days visiting family are ruined by parking fines.

Weekend parking enforcement isn’t as easy as it sounds.

When someone complains through 311 about a car parked for longer than three hours, the call centre sends the information to the bylaw dispatch and an officer will be sent to the location. The officer marks the vehicle, but the followup might not happen until the next day, simply because the officer’s shift will be over or the officer has a heavy workload. The officer who marks the car needs to be the same one who follows up.

There might be between eight and 13 parking enforcement officers working on a weekend.

With the proposed change to the six-hour parking limit, it’s likely that officers won’t be able to return until the next day to check cars they marked.

The city received a large public response during a consultation over the summer, with 1,971 people responding to an online survey and 72 per cent of them supporting the proposal to extend the maximum parking time on weekends and holidays. The five communities with the largest number of responses were Stittsville, Barrhaven, Orléans, Glebe/Ottawa South and Westboro/Wellington Village.

Most councillors voiced support for the six-hour limit, even if they know some residents want tighter parking restrictions.

“I do have some hard-nosers who are after more and more enforcement,” Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Michael Qaqish said.

Council will consider the recommendation next Wednesday. If approved, the new six-hour parking rule will come into effect June 1, 2018.

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